In May, 1422, Queen Catherine came back escorted in great pomp by a great body of English troops. She arrived at Vincennes, where she stayed some weeks with her parents and husband who received her, as an ancient chronicler observes, “as if she had been an angel.” The court kept Whitsuntide at Paris, Charles VI. and Isabeau at the hôtel St. Paul, Henry V. and Catherine at the Louvre. The people thronged to see the great banquets at which the King and Queen of England feasted in splendid robes, crowns, and jewels; while those of the King and Queen of France were neglected, and at neither were food and wine given away according to ancient custom, which caused much discontent. But these were the last great fêtes of the French court in the reigns of Charles and Henry. In the following August the King of England, who had for some time been suffering from a dangerous and, in those days, incurable malady, died at Vincennes, and his death was followed in October by that of Charles VI. at the hôtel St. Paul. Henry died at thirty-six, in the midst of a brilliant and victorious career King of England and almost King of France, leaving a widow of twenty-one overwhelmed with grief, an infant heir to two kingdoms, and a nation in mourning. Charles, whose reign began so magnificently, passed away in the half-deserted palace of St. Paul. Although Isabeau was living there at the time, only his confessor, almoner, and the first gentleman of his household were with him when he died, at the age of fifty-three.
{1423}
The Queen does not seem to have been present at the funeral, the Dauphin was an exile and an enemy, and the chief mourner was the Duke of Bedford, Regent of France for Henry of Lancaster. The funeral waited till his arrival at Paris and there was much dispute as to what the arrangements should be, it having been so long since a King of France had been buried that very few people remembered, and there were no records on the subject.
The litter was so constructed, that it could be made narrower to pass through the doors of St. Paul, Notre Dame, and the narrow streets, and widened in the broader thoroughfares. On it was placed the coffin covered with a pall of cloth of gold and scarlet with deep border of blue velvet embroidered with golden fleurs-de-lis, which fell down to the ground. It was surmounted by an image of the King dressed in royal robes, with mantle of ermine, crown, and sceptre. The litter was carried by the “varlets” of the King and followed by two hundred gentlemen of his household in black, bearing torches and shields with the arms of France. Next came the mendicant orders, Jacobins, Carmelites, Cordeliers, and Augustins, then the colleges, parochial clergy, ecclesiastics of the collegiate churches and university, bishops, abbots and nobles, members of Parliament, the four presidents in mantles of scarlet and vair holding the four corners of the pall, the King’s chamberlain, esquires, and many of the chief citizens; the Duke of Bedford, Regent of France, rode behind the litter. The streets and windows were crowded with people mourning and lamenting, and so, at the hour of vespers the body of Charles le Bien-aimé was carried to Notre Dame. The church was hung with costly stuffs covered with fleurs-de-lis, and blazing with torches, the psalms and vigils for the dead were chanted “et fut nuict.” Next morning, after mass, the procession formed again and the body was carried in state to St. Denis, where all night the monks chanted psalms and vigils for the dead; and then next day, after a magnificent requiem, Charles VI. was buried by his father and mother, and through the dim aisles and cloister of the great abbey resounded the cry, “Pray for the soul of the most excellent prince, Charles VI., King of France.”
After the religious rites were over the Duke of Bedford dined in his own room, but there was a great dinner in the vast hall of the abbey to which crowded prelates, nobles, gentlemen, and officials, maîtres d’hôtel restraining those who were pressing to the chief table and had no right there, and alms being distributed while the banquet was going on to more than five thousand poor people.
Isabeau survived her husband twelve years, but this latter part of her life contains scarcely anything of sufficient interest to record. After the death of her son-in-law Henry V., with whom she always got on well, the departure of her daughter Catherine for England, and the death of Charles VI., she lived in the half-deserted palace of St. Paul with a diminished household and shattered fortune. Her daughter the Duchess of Burgundy died in 1423, and of her twelve children there only remained the son she hated, the Queen of England, now far away, and her second and third daughters, Jeanne, Duchesse de Bretagne, and Marie, Prioress of Poissy, whom it is to be supposed she sometimes saw.
Her brother, Ludwig of Bavaria, also survived her. But war and famine and pestilence had devastated the kingdom. Grass grew in the streets of Paris, and wolves came and attacked children outside the walls and even within the city.[274] One event of interest happened in 1431, which was the state entry of her grandson Henry VI. into Paris. While Isabeau stood at the window of the hôtel St. Paul watching the pageant, the child looked up at her as he rode by, and, some one saying to him, “That is the Queen-dowager of France, your grandmother,” he took off his cap and saluted her. At the sight of the young King, the son of her favourite daughter, riding as she herself had done amid the acclamations of the people through the streets which had once been decorated and thronged to do her honour, Isabeau burst into tears and turned from the window. The King, then ten years old, afterwards went to visit his grandmother at the hôtel St. Paul.[275]
{1435}
Isabeau died there in 1435, September 29th. She had a favourite old German lady who lived with her to the last and with her other ladies followed her funeral cortège to Notre Dame on the 13th of October. Very little pomp was displayed on that occasion, but the clergy of that cathedral came in procession to St. Paul, and spared nothing to make the office worthy of a sovereign, lending a crown, sceptre, and other royal ornaments. There were present the Chancellor of France, the Bishop of Paris, and certain French and English nobles. After the ceremony the body was placed in a boat by the presidents of Parliament and taken to St. Denis to be buried by her husband Charles VI.[276]
Paris was still in possession of the English, but just before the Queen’s death the treaty of Arras was signed between the Duke of Burgundy and Charles VII.